The present invention relates to a font processing technique for maintaining e-document layout. More particularly, the present invention relates to a font processing technique for a user terminal (e.g., smart phone, smart pad, digital set-top box) displaying or printing an electronic document (e-document) (e.g., word file, presentation file) to approximately maintain original layout of the e-document even though lacking of original font of the e-document.
Recently, user terminals such as smart phones, smart pads and digital set-top boxes are widely spread. In user terminals, a software (e.g., POLARIS OFFICE of Infraware Inc.) generally opens an e-document such as a word file (e.g., DOC file), a presentation file (e.g., PPT file). The software displays each character of the e-document with considering font option for each character.
A user terminal may fail to install some of original fonts used for authoring the e-document. In that case, a personal computer may instantly download through Internet font data of the original font.
However, mobile terminals such as smart phones and smart pads may be unwilling to use such approach, because due to poor mobile communication environment such approach renders the responsiveness of the mobile terminal to become lowered. Rather, mobile terminal adopts an alternative font, e.g., a similar font or default font instead of the original font. In that case, the display layout or printing layout becomes different from what it is originally intended, because the alternative font has different size for each character from the original font.
In order to prevent this problem, there was a trial in which as many fonts as possible are installed in user terminals. However, that trial is insufficient, because there is a limit in capacity for storing binary data (i.e., font data) in user terminals and many fonts accompany big cost for font licenses.